Corrective eyewear has been used for hundreds of years. Typical corrective eyewear is a pair of eyeglasses and includes two lenses in a frame, one or both lenses providing optical correction. The lenses may be of almost any shape, size, color, material, or the like, and the frames may be metal, plastic, composite, or any other suitable material. The numerous choices for lenses and frames allow for almost limitless aesthetic eyewear choices.
Non-corrective eyewear also has been used for many years. An example of non-corrective eyewear is sunglasses, sometimes referred to as sun shades, sunwear, tinted lenses, etc. Many types of sunglasses exist, such as those using polarized lenses, light blocking, absorbing, and/or filtering lenses, etc. other examples of non-corrective eyewear include ski goggles, wind goggles, SCUBA and other swimmer's masks, etc.
Corrective eyewear typically is selected according to the prescription of the wearer since no one single corrective lens will work for everyone. Thus, corrective eyewear must be individually customized to the prescription of the eyeglass wearer at significant cost. A corrective eyeglass wearer may purchase multiple lenses and frames for each type of eyewear owned such as corrective sunglasses and normal, e.g., non-light absorbing or blocking, corrective eyeglasses.
An inexpensive alternative to customizing sunglasses is a pair of shaded lenses within a frame that can be clipped onto the corrective eyeglasses. These clip-on sunglasses are commonly called clip-ons.
Exemplary clip-on sunglasses have a frame with four clips located at the upper right hand, upper left hand, lower right hand, and lower left hand corners of the clip-on sunglasses to attach the clip-on sunglasses to the corrective eyewear. The clip-on sunglasses typically are of similar size and shape to the corrective eyeglasses to which they are attached. If the clip-on sunglasses are too large, they will too easily detach from the corrective eyeglasses while if the clip-on sunglasses are too small they cannot be attached to the corrective eyeglasses. Another type of clip-on sunglasses uses a resiliently mounted forklike clip that holds to the corrective eyewear frame at the part above the bridge of the user's nose. A disadvantage to conventional clip-on sunglasses is the bulk and the relatively unattractive appearance created which spoil an effort to be stylish. Clip-ons for most other kinds of eyewear such as scuba masks or ski goggles would be highly impractical.
Another technique to attach corrective lenses mounted in a mounting frame or rim, which has a bridge, to sunglasses or the like has been to remove the existing bridge (sometimes referred to below as a nosepiece, etc.) From the sunglasses and to snap in its place the corrective eyewear frame bridge. However, such corrective lenses had to be specially made to fit a given corrective eyewear frame. Usually the optician would have to request from a lens manufacturer or vendor the needed lenses with the correct magnification characteristics, axis orientation for astigmatism, shape to fit the corrective eyewear frame, etc. These procedures require substantial time, equipment, cost, etc., and delay delivery of the finished eyewear to a customer, usually by days and sometimes longer.
Accordingly, there is a need in the eyeglass art for an inexpensive and readily adaptable way of combining corrective eyewear and non-corrective eyewear.
There also is a need to provide such combined corrective and non-corrective eyewear to customers in a very short time, e.g., same day or even for substantially immediate purchase.
There also is a need to effect such combining while providing an aesthetically pleasing and/or stylish appearance.